1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to multimedia environments and, more particularly, to systems and methods for managing multimedia information.
2. Description of Related Art
Much of the information that exists today is not easily manageable. For example, databases exist for storing different types of multimedia information. Typically, these databases treat audio and video differently from text. Audio and video data are usually assigned text annotations to facilitate their later retrieval. Traditionally, the audio and video data are assigned the text annotations manually, which is a time-consuming task. The annotations also tended to be insufficient to unambiguously describe the media content. Automatic database creation systems were developed but did not solve the problems of the ambiguous annotations.
As a result, there is a need for systems and methods for managing multimedia information in a manner that is transparent to the actual type of media involved.